Apologetic Host Aims To Shoot First

The bird hunting season has been unusual, considering that Radar, my Brittany spaniel, has not had a single close encounter with skunks, porcupines or cow pies.

But the pointer and I made up for this lack of color by rubbing noses with an assortment of characters who made the season memorable.

Among them were Lance Peterson and John Graves, a pair of Spokane Valley high school seniors who have put life in proper perspective.

Hunting first. Soccer second.

“We got in trouble for missing practice during the hunting season,” Lance said. “But you’ve got all year to play soccer and only a few months to hunt pheasants and deer.”

I connected with Lance and John by bidding on a bird hunt at the Discovery School fund-raising auction. I had assumed the hunt would be guided by Gayle Peterson, Lance’s mom and the school’s distinguished music and physical education teacher. The hunt was to be staged on her family’s farm near Connell.

I was wrong on the major points.

“Lance and John are thrilled to be taking you hunting,” Mrs. Peterson said in the pre-dawn darkness near an I-90 off-ramp.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you’ve got a rig.”

Lance also has a pickup, but it has bad tires and an empty gas tank, she explained, hopping in her car to leave me alone with the boys.

Lance and John, I learned, have a circuit of hunting spots around Spokane carefully chosen to allow a decent chance to bag a whitetail or a pheasant between school dismissal and dark.

The spots also have to be close enough to walk home should all four tires on Lance’s pickup disintegrate simultaneously.

The boys’ favorite hunting spot, however, is the irrigated corn and asparagus fields surrounding the farm of Lance’s grandparents. Serious planning is required to hunt the faraway fields of the Columbia Basin on a high-schooler’s budget.

“We snuck over to the farm once on the way to a soccer game in the Tri-Cities,” Lance said. “Playing soccer in the afternoon seemed easy after crashing through those asparagus fields all morning.”

As I opened the pickup tailgate to release Radar at the farm, Lance politely asked, “Do you mind If we take our guns along on the hunt?”

“Of course you can,” I said.

“Mom thought you’d probably say OK,” he said. “But she made us swear we’d let you have the first shots at any pheasants.”

He said this as though it were a faint possibility as he watched Radar launch through the shelter belt, ricochet off several irrigation ditches and smoke down a canal road.

“What does he do when he finds a bird?” Lance asked.

“Sometimes he points it,” I said.

Indeed, Radar did. A cock flew out away from the dog behind us. Reacting with youthful reflexes, Lance instinctively dispatched the rooster in a cloud of feathers before I could raise the shotgun to my shoulder.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Lance screamed as the pheasant was still tumbling to the ground. He was bent over and wincing as though he’d been poked in the belly. “I thought I could hold back, but I just couldn’t do it. I’ll unload my gun. I’m sorry. I promise I won’t do it again. I’m … “

“Shut up, Lance,” I said.

John slapped his knee in laughter and Lance finally loosened up. He apologized only 12 more times in the next 5 minutes.

The boys seemed to enjoy hunting with an older guy, particularly as I missed several shots that were only slightly more difficult than hitting the side of a barn from 20 paces.

“I respect you as a conservationist,” Lance said. “You can hunt with us anytime, as long as you don’t kill any of my grandpa’s birds - and we come in your rig.”

Lance and John are two of the most likeable hunting companions one could find. But not everyone recognizes that.

“A few years ago when we first started going hunting together, we never had a problem getting permission to hunt,” Lance said.

“Yeh,” said John. “We’d go up to the door and farmers would think we were cute and harmless and give us the run of the place.”

“Now people turn us down right and left,” Lance said. “The most I can hope for nowadays is not getting yelled at. I don’t get it. We’re the same people.”

“No we’re not,” John said. “Now we’re teenagers.”

, DataTimes MEMO: You can contact Rich Landers by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5508.

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